From my trip last week to Toshiba’s computer headquarters in Irvine, its new laptops have a few new features worth noting.

Most interesting is the USB slot. USB ports are a convenient way to charge up a cell phone, PDA or other small gadget especially when you’re out on the road and don’t want to bring the gadget’s charger. But don’t you hate it when your laptop goes to sleep and in the morning, your cell phone is dead?

Toshiba’s “Sleep-and-Charge USB ports” charge your gadgets even when the machine is turned off! This feature is only available on four new Satellite notebooks, the Satellite U400, Satellite M300, Satellite A300 and Satellite P300.

Another convenience: Toshiba painted tiny icons on the lap of the notebook to show what ports are below (Ethernet, USB, ExpressCard). No more straining your neck to see where the ports are. A lightening bolt indicates the Sleep and Charge port, as pictured below.

Money saver? The notebooks are around $870 to $950. Not bad for a laptop. But as my editor put it, that’s one expensive USB charger!

Other tweaks:

• A webcam that juts out slightly above the center of the screen so you don’t have to sit up straight to take a direct video of yourself
• A Regza link to simplify connecting the notebook to a TV. It automatically adjusts the screen size or resolution if the TV also has a similar link. Regza is just Toshiba’s name for Consumer Electronics Control technology, or CEC. Sharp calls its link the Aquos link, Phillips has the Easylink. As long as both the PC and TV have the CEC links, they’ll work together. A bonus: you’ll be able to use one remote control to operate the TV and PC.
• Face recognition, which Mark Lackey, Toshiba’s product manager for the Digital Products Division, insists saves time. No more logging in!

In other Toshiba news, its budget laptops have also been announced: The Satellite A200 includes the usual stuff a computer needs but also adds a DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash, webcam and a 160-GB hard drive for $599. The high end of the budget line is $849 adds a 250-GB hard drive and 3 GBs of memory.

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